This week, we’ll take a turn into visual communication. Since you are creating a PowerPoint Presentation for this course and will likely create presentations, flyers, reports with charts, and other documents requiring graphic elements, it’s a good idea to learn some principles for integrating words and graphics in an effective way.

There are literally hundreds of principles of design that you could learn. But for now, we will zero in on four. If you learn these four, you will create visual documents that are far better than you could do without knowing these principles.

I have attached a PowerPoint presentation and some Lecture notes to accompany it. The best way to attack this information, I think, is to print out this Lecture now. Then open the PowerPoint presentation and read the Lecture notes as you look at the presentation. PRINT THIS LECTURE NOW.

Lecture Notes

Slide 1- Title Slide-

Slide 2- I have taken these principles of design from a nice, little book by Robin Williams. You can probably still buy this book from Amazon.com. I have changed many of the examples or made new ones to fit on a PowerPoint slide.

Slide 3- We will study these four principles of design. Some of my students have enjoyed taking the first letter from each of the principles and making an acronym that is easy to remember. Can you see a word by combining the first letters? J…. Well, we don’t want to make “crappy” documents, but at least the acronym will remind you of the principles as you make visual documents in the future.

Slide 4- We will first look at the principle of CONRAST. The important thing to remember is that in any document the elements that relate logically to each other should appear close to each other on the page.

Slide 5- Here is a definition of Contrast.

Slide 6- Imagine that this slide is a business card. The problem with it is that the elements are scattered all over the card, making it difficult for the reader to make any connection between them. Before going to the next slide, mentally rearrange the elements. Which ones would you put together. Why?

Slide 7- This is one way to redesign the card. You may have thought of another good one. On this business card, the name of the company is emphasized. As an alternative, you could put John Steinbeck’s name in the featured position and move the location information to the bottom.

Slide 8- This slide represents the banner of a newsletter. What is wrong with the proximity (logical location) of the elements? Redesign it mentally before going to the next slide. What would you put together? Why?

Slide 9- Here’s my revision. Did you move elements to the same positions? Again, you might have a perfectly logical alternative. The important thing is to get the elements together on the page so that their logical relationships are clear.